Registering system for telephone-exchanges



(No Model.)

J. G; CLARK. REGISTERING SYSTEM FOR TELEPHONE EXGHANG-ES. No. 433,445.

Patented Aug.- 5, 1890.

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ATTORNEYS.

UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

JOEL O. CLARK, OF MORRISTOWN, NEW JERSEY.

REGISTERING SYSTEM FOR TELEPHONE-EXCHANGES.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 433,445, dated August 5, 1890.

Application filed May 25, 1889. Serial No. 312,114. (No model.)

To all whom it may concern.-

Be it known that I, JOEL O. CLARK, a citizen of the United States, residing at Morristown, in the county of Morris'and State of New Jersey, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Registering Systems for Telephone-Exchanges; and I do hereby declare the following to be a full, clear, and exact description of the invention, such as will enable others skilled in the art to which it appertains to make and use the same.

The object of this invention is to provide means for registering the various circumstances occurring in the routine of telephoneexchange servicesuch as the number of calls made in a day, the time at which the call is made, and that at which the station calling is connected with and disconnected from the station called, or the exact lapse of time during such operation, one or more of these data affording the required basis for toll-charges, according to the character of the exchange to which the invention may be applied.

A further object of my invention is to efiect the registry in an automatic manner, as also to automatically indicate, relatively, the moments of call, connection, and disconnection, without manual labor or mental effort on the part of the operator, leaving the operator merely the labor of manually registering the names of symbols which indicate the stations calling and called.

A further object of the invention is to adapt the apparatus used so that time-registry may be effected independently for each operator in a multiple switch-board system.

A further object of theinvention is to facilitate the necessary manual registry of names or symbols indicating the stations calling and called.

To these and other ends, my invention comprises the organization and arrangement of devices, substantially as hereinafter more fully described, and'pointed out in the claims.

In the accompanying drawings which form a part of this specification, Figure 1 is a diagram illustrating one arrangement of devices in relation to a switch-board for the purpose of carrying my invention into practical effect. Fig. 2 is a plan showing a piece of the strip containing the record made by the devices shown in Fig. 1. Fig. 3 is a modification of the devices which may be used in automatic ally registering the time of connecting and disconnecting, and Fig. 4 is a plan of strip which can be produced, if desired.

One form of my invention is illustrated in Figs. 1 and 2, the various parts being shown in outline for the sake of clearness, the de-.

tails of' construction being merely amatter of judgment and well within the knowledge of those skilled in the art to which my invention appertains.

At a convenient point on the table of the switch-board at the central office I mount a large printing-wheel 1, which I connect to a time-movement 2 by any suitable meanssuch, for instance, as the horizontal shaft 3, carrying the Worm 4, which meshes with the worm-wheel 5 on the shaft of wheel 1; and I prefer to so proportion the parts that wheel 1 makes exactly one revolution in one minute. In this case I form the wheel 1 with raised characters on its periphery adapted to print or mark each of the seconds in the minute, and also the intervening quarter-seconds. The inking medium is in this case a tape, carried-on the rollers 6 and passes under the wheel 1. Beneath the latter is a roller 7, which serves the purpose of the platen and also that of a friction-roller, drawing the paper strip 8 through the apparatus, the latter being mounted on a reel 9 in any convenient position. I prefer to make the face of wheel 1 wide enough to'have its plain portion serve as platen for the recording of the other symbols. The rotation of wheel 1 in exact synchronism once per minute with a suitable member of the time-movement 2 causes it and the roller 7 to feed the strip 8 uniformly toward the left, and as it is fed in this manner the pressure of the wheel 1 by means of the inking-ribbon imprints on the strip 8 the divisions of the minute, as already described, and as indicated on the strip shown in Fig. 2.

The ordinary practice in exchange construction being to have an annunciator-drop for each of the calling-stations, and a connecting device, usually in the nature of the spring-jack, I may adapt these devices for the purpose of making the operations automatic, and with this end in'vieWI proceed in various ways, some of which are as follows: A fixed contact 10 may be arranged in any suitable position and in proximity thereto a movable contact 11, the arrangement being such that the fall of the drop-shutter-12, belonging to one of the calling-stations, will in its movement strike the spring 11 and pass it, the impact causing a momentary closing of the spring 11 upon the fixed contact 10, and thereby closing the circuit of which the parts 10 and 11 form the terminals, this circuit being a local circuit containingabattery 13 and an electro-magnet 14. The latter is furnished with an armature 15, on a pivoted lever 16, carrying at its opposite end a suitable character, which, in the illustration,has the effect of impressing a star upon the moving strip 8, when the circuit of magnet 14 is closed by the fall of the annunciator-drop. The printing of this starthus indicates the exact moment at which the call arrives at the central office, and the position will be to one side of the row of time-symbols. It will thus be noticed that the circuit of magnet 14 is a normallyopen circuit.

In order to indicate the moment of connection and disconnection of the calling station, thus also indicating the lapse of time consumed in the conversation, I make use of the spring-jack or equivalent connections, so that the indication will be dependent upon the actual connection and disconnection by the operator in charge of the switch-board. A simple form of device for this purpose is as follows: The spring terminals 18 and 19 of the switch-board must be opened in order to connect the calling-station to which they belong to another station of the system, and to open the circuit formed between them the plug 20in some form is generally used. I establish a local circuit, of which the springs 18 and 19 form the terminals, and this local circuit includes a battery 21 and an electromagnet 22. An armature 23 is mounted in front of magnet 22 on apivoted lever 24, whose extremity carries a dotting-wheel 25, occupying such position that upon the release of armature 23 by magnet 22 a spring 26 operates to press the wheel into contact with the under side of the paper strip 8, and as the latter moves forward in the manner already shown a succession of dots are imprinted on the strip 8. The circuit controlling this device is a normally-closed circuit, and is open ed by the insertion of the plug 20 between the springs 18 and 19. Therefore upon the insertion of plug 20, or, in other words, immediately upon the connection of the calling and into printing position and begins to form on the strip 8 a row of dots; hence the beginning of the row of dots, taken in connection with the time-scale alongside of it, will accurately determine the moment at which the two stations were connected, and the row of dots will continue along the time-scale until the wheel 25 has been drawn out of contact with the paper strip 8 by the withdrawal of the connecting-plug 20 and the resulting closing of the local circuit, thus energizing the magnet 22 and attracting armature 23. The point at which the row of dots ceases indicates on the time-scale the exact moment at which the disconnection was effected, and the time between the connection and disconnection is shown by the line of dots in the most accurate manner.

Obviously the switch-board would have similar connections for each of the stations over which it would have control. For example, there might readily be one hundred of the annunciators indicated in the drawings by the drop 12 and a like number of the spring-switchin g arrangements indicated by the parts 18, 19, and 20, and in that event the two local circuits would be arranged with multiple terminals, so that the magnet 14 would be operated by the fall of any one of the one hundred annunciator-drops, and the armature 23 would be released by the insertion of the plug 20 between any of the pairs of spring contacts 18 and 19 throughout the switchboard.

Obviously the foregoing apparatus may be readily duplicated, so that asingle time-movement 2 may control any desired number of switch-board sections, each under the control of a separate operator, and each having a complete setof the devices diagrammed in Fig. 1, and in this event the printing-wheel 1 may be so constructed as to print distinguishing marks or symbols upon the paper, which will indicate at any time afterward the switchboard at which it had been used or the number or name of the operator. The duplication of devices can be readily controlled by the single standard time-movement 2, by running the shaft 3 along the entire line of the switch-board in the operating-room, thus giving each of the time-wheels 1 exactly the same speed and keeping them all in synchronism with each other.

Sometimes the nature of the switch-board may render it difficult to use the spring-jack as the means of operating the time-registering devices for indicating connection and disconnection. In such event I may arrange the devices as shown at Fig. 3. Here I make the operation of registering dependent on the removal and registration of the connectingcords by the operator. A frequentlymsed form of switch-board demands the use of a pair of connecting-cords, each carrying a plug at one end for insertion in the spring-jacks of the board, and a connection between two lines is effected only when the two'plugs of the pair are respectively inserted in the proper spring-jacks. Usually the pair of cords 30 31 are passed through the desk 32 and held against tangling by weights below, which also act to draw the cords down when idle, leaving only the plugs 20 projecting, as shown. I form each plug, or at least one of each pair, with a metallic ring 33, and set a split-metal bushing 34 35 in the top of the desk 32 around the cord-opening, the two halves of the bushing being insulated from each other. The parts 34 35 form the terminals of a local circuit 36, which includes the electro-magnet22 and battery 21, operating the armature 23, lever 24, and dotting-wheel 25, as in Fig. 1. So long as the plug is idle the wheel isout of contact with paperstripS; but the moment the plug is lifted to make a connection the local circuit is opened, armature 23 and lever 24 released, and the dotting-wheel begins to mark the time. Upon disconnection plug 20 is allowed to be drawn down by its suspension-weight and the local circuit is closed, thereby causing the time-dots on the paper to cease.

The foregoing system will be found of great convenienceand advantage in registering the circumstances connected with calls for the purpose of gathering any desired statistics in relation to the number of calls, and their proportions during different hours of the day or night; but it will be most especially useful as aitording a most exact time indication as a basis for tolls in such systems of communication where a charge is made according to the time in which the connection has been given to the calling-station. It is very important to have an accurate basis for this purpose, as on some of the long lines now in regular commercial use the charges are on a basis of a given sum per minute, and obviously in the course of a months business the smallest fraction of a minute, if unnoted,

might amount in the aggregate to avery considerable loss. Such small fractions of time cannot usually be properly registered by hand.

The automatic features hereinbefore described are likewise of great advantage, since they permit the operator to devote closer attention to the regular business of the switchboard than is possible under the present manual system, wherein all the data which I provide for automatically must be written down by hand upon prepared blanks on which must be inscribed the time of call, and that of connection and disconnection, where tolls are to be charged for the service of the lines according to the time of use In some cases, however, where the amount of business will permit it the registering of the moment of call as well as that of connection and disconnection may be conveniently done by hand by means of suitable keys operating in a similar manner to the armature-levers hereinbefore described, or by means of treadles for pedal operation in an analogous manner. As these modifications are obvious I do not further describe them.

Instead of printing letters to indicate calls was received, the square shows when connection was made, and the circle marks the disconnection. For this purpose three printingmagnets are obviously required and would be arranged so as to be operated in succession by the operations of calling, connecting, and disconnecting.

The recording of disconnection may be made by a third magnet placed in series with magnet 22 and provided with a striking-hammer arranged to make an impression upon the tape only when the jack-plug is taken out, the action being in all respects similar to the striking of the bell-hammer against the bell in the ordinary vibrating bell. In all cases, however, a strip of paper or other material will be used for the purpose of affording the most convenient means of efiect= ing the registry of the required data, and the time-record will be always printed on the same.

I claim as my invention 1. The described system of registering in telephone exchanges, comprising a rotary printing-wheel provided with characters or marksindicative of the time elapsing between successive characters or marks, in combination with a time-movement arranged to rotate said wheel once each ordinary division of time-such, for example, as a minute or hour-a record strip or tape, and means for maintaining it in continuous contact with the printing-wheel, one or more independent marking devices arranged in operative relation to the record strip, and one or more eleetro-magnets controlling such markers and having their circuits in operative combina tion with the electrical switching mechanism of the exchange switch-board, wherebya continuous time-record is printed upon the record-strip and an indicating-mark made at the required point thereon to indicate the time of the desired event.

2. The described system of registering in telephone-exchanges, comprising a rotary printing-wheel provided with characters or marks indicative of the time elapsing between successive characters or marks, in combination with a time-movem ent arranged to rotate said wheel once each ordinary division of time-such, for example, as a minute or hour-a record strip or tape, and means for maintaining it in continuous contact with the printing-wheel, one or more independent marking devices arranged in operative rela tion to the record-strip, an electro-magnet controlling such marker, a local circuit for such electro-magnet, including a battery or other source of current, a switch in such local circuit, a telephone switclrboard, and means for operating such switch dependent upon one of the manual movements of the opercating-mark made at the required point thereon to indicate the time of the desired event.

In testimony whereof I affix my signature in presence of two Witnesses.

JOEL O. CLARK.

Vitnesses:

W. J. HODSON, EDWARD W. BELL. 

